TMN security: An evolutionary approach

Abstract

This paper focuses on the practical aspects of the integration of security services into telecommunication management applications as well as the building blocks needed to achieve a company wide security policy and ensure the consistent usage throughout the Telecommunication Management Network. The OSI security architecture [7] provides the flexibility necessary for the adaption to environments that deal with highly sensitive data like security management in a distributed telecommunication management network. However, to achieve interworking between implementations of different vendors it is of crucial importance to define functional security profiles and hence define an implementable subset of the security services suited to TMN. Prototype implementation and testing in the RACE project R2058 SAMSON has demonstrated that the security services and architectures currently under standardisation are capable to provide sufficient security mechanisms.